When my boys were little guys, my older son convinced us that he needed an iguana.
Personally, I don’t think “need” and “iguana” should ever appear in the same sentence, but Ryan had saved his money, so we relented. The iguana he picked out was small, which was good. Something so ugly should definitely be small.
My son also bought some iguana “accessories,” including a leash to hook up to the critter to take him for walks. Yes, that’s right. A leash made especially for iguanas. Who knew?
I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around the concept of wanting to walk an iguana, but I figured it was a guy thing. Part of the quirky male mystique and all that.
So Ryan brought “Iggy” home and began to hitch him up for their first stroll together. That maiden voyage was a disaster. Iggy had an extreme aversion to his leash, to put it mildly, and wasn’t the least bit interested in going for a stroll.
The little psycho-lizard frantically clawed at Ryan and the “stroll” turned into a hideous lizard voodoo dance. Iggy had himself a jumping and twisting conniption fit, and looked like he was trying to hang himself on his leash. (Part of me thought that might not be such a bad thing.)
Ryan tried to convince Iggy that walking on a leash would be fun. Bless his heart, he tried. But Iggy was not buying it.
I was reminded of Iggy recently as I was changing the diaper of my visiting granddaughter, a one-year-old bundle of uber-cute energy. We were on the floor and I was having quite a time corralling Edda’s squirmy bottom into a diaper.
Being a new grandmother means that I’m rehoning baby skills that have gotten a bit rusty, but this diaper-changing fiasco wasn’t about my lack of skill. It was all about the fact that Edda did not want to stop playing and slow down for a pit stop.
So she wiggled, writhed, rocked and rolled as I chased, clutched, wiped, wrapped and taped. It was quite a show.
Three analogies came to mind – one was of rodeo calf-roping; the second was the memory of Ryan trying to take that crazy iguana for a walk. In fact, I told Edda that she was being as “wiggly as Iggy,” but she just smiled her four-tooth smile, basked in my grandmotherly adoration, and kept right on wiggling.
The third analogy hit closer to home, as I realized, “Wow, this must be how God feels when He is trying to change me.” Not my diapers, mind you. Thankfully, I’m between the two diaper phases of life.
But I do need my heart, mind, and life changed from time to time, and sometimes the process is a bit of a calf-roping, iguana-walking, diaper-changing ordeal.
All Ryan wanted to do was to enjoy fellowship with his iguana friend; all I wanted to do was to increase Edda’s comfort with a clean diaper; all God wants to do is to lead us into the best possible life and into the deepest possible relationship with Himself, and to grow us up to look more and more like Jesus.
As the Bible says in Romans 8:29: “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son …”
And in Philippians 1:6: “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
When we sense God trying to change us, the best thing we can do is this: let Him. Just let Him. It may be hard, but it’s gonna be good.
Remember this: an iguana on a leash isn’t a pretty sight.